first job we're going to trip across the pond with a heavy u.k. lineup on today's show the first of many of us many of us we struggle to keep up with our financial house and keep it all in order and the queen of england is no exception i'll tell you all about it coming on up and former banker and financial blogger francis coppola joined me earlier today from our london studio to discuss fiscal policy interest rates and the overall you character i mean you won't want to miss that interview and finally a big big player in the big coin world was arrested on monday so what does this mean for the cryptocurrency community ed harris and i discussed this in today's big deal at all starts right now.

no one ever said that managing a household budget was easy it requires a frank and thorough assessment of your needs versus your wants along with critical thinking mathematics projected earnings not to mention a cold dose of your financial reality and not even monarchs are exempt from this unpleasant exercise now a new report from britain's house of commons shows deep concern for the bank balance of queen elizabeth in only ten years window from thirty five million pounds to just one million pounds today the report found that the royal household spent so much last year that their reserve funds are now at the lowest levels in history the public accounts committee found that the treasury which is responsible for overseeing the royal household finances is failing to do enough last year the royal household net expenditures was thirty three point three million pounds well received thirty one million pounds from the song. raphe chairwoman of the public

accounts committee margaret hodge said more can be done during korea's revenue for the royal household. you can look at raising more income they've done a bit of work in that but if you just look at buckingham palace it has about half a million businesses a year now that the tower of london has over two million visitors a year and of course buckingham palace is its didn't palace so the things are different but nevertheless the queen is not that all of the time and i think more income could be generated if smarter use was made of the if they did but it is the palace when the queen is not in residence. the crown estate is worth more than seven point three eight billion pounds and includes properties across the u.k. let's just hope that royal baby george grows up to be a bit more savvy when it comes to money matters than the rest of his family is today. well there you have it as always we'll be tracking this story and keeping

you posted on all the latest. with her household budget or not the british economy appears to be on the men the men you would say and with growth from last year coming in at one point nine percent the u.k. had its best performance since the financial crisis the coalition government says it knows a lot of improvements to its economic policy and crucial to the central bank's quantitative easing was that economic policy whereby the government bonds with newly printed reserve money is this really the truth that's the big question our next guest former banker and finance blogger francis coppola is here to break this down with us for us and by us speaking with her earlier today i began by asking how well she thought the british economy was doing here's what she had to say. fish

government we're doing well and we do seem to be climbing up to recovery which is a very good thing the latest price because look much better. the ticket so this is actually so i suspect it's a property bubble that may be in of the story. now the bank of england and the federal reserve are among central banks that have turned to quantitative easing buying assets with newly printed reserve money to keep the economy marching forward now in your view what impact has this had on the british economy. well the quantity of these things but it's time to pull things. we had two rounds of quantitative easing which i think probably did help to protect this city from the effects of the financial crisis and then subsequently from the effects of the years and crisis because of the sea europe is our major trading partner and what happened there did have quite a big impact on our economy they've also done all the measures as well such as

funding for lending scheme which has helped to provide cheaper funds to banks which helps to improve lending to particular property in a. hasn't had quite effect on business lending that we would have liked but it is about to change so that hopefully a future of the funding for lending will be directed much more towards businesses reasons than residential property now you mentioned property which i do want to get you a little bit later on but i want to start by asking you are george osborne the chancellor of the exchequer the u.k.'s treasury secretary he would say because the government's economic agenda which includes you includes q.e. is just what the doctor ordered one hundred percent he's says that the banks they're sitting on reserves and need to lend them out and that q.e. is designed to do exactly that in fact he says it's forces them to do just that what do you make of this argument. he's arguing that the loose munchie policy the quantitative easing and the very low interest rates and other measures to tweak had

in the last few years has enabled him to conduct a program of fiscal austerity without causing major damage the economy i'm afraid i disagree and i know i'm not the only person who disagrees with him on that i don't think the money policy can be used to offset fiscal tightening and i do think we would have a recovery fall sooner if we hadn't had some really quite ill considered fiscal tightening in the last few years so you obviously don't consider q.e. a good policy but it since it's not a good policy in your opinion why are central banks doing it. i'm not saying that q.e. isn't a bad policy. those asset prices which when your asset prices are in freefall is they were after the financial crisis come the good thing and they said we have here is a crisis as well but we also had a falling asset prices so that can be a good thing it does help to keep the economy afloat to reflate it when we've got a risk of deflation quantitative easing does help with that. and it may be has

helped with things like funding for large corporations that kind of thing my argument is that it doesn't kind of reach the parts that it really needs to reach it doesn't reach what's in america you call main streets it doesn't rise to economy and so we've had very rich the assets holders to quite well out to this same time as other people poor people have been suffering falls in wages and savers have been hit by a lack of savings interest and savings those kind of things so we've had a bit of give one hand and take it away but the other really ok now savers in the u.k. they're getting hit pretty hard by the decline in interest rates and some of come together now to lobby the u.k. to raise rates and there is some indication that the bank of england may do just that by the end of the year are these savers just asking for extra returns that they don't necessarily deserve effectively rent seeking if you will. but i'm

wondering who you've been listening to because i listened to me on newsnight the other night and he said that he didn't expect him to interest rates rise anytime soon i think there's a fair amount of wishful thinking going on here. where we are at the moment is we have subdued inflation and we have stagnant wage rises there is no inflationary pressure in the economy at all apart from in the housing market and even that is not across the whole country the whole country so i'm wondering what the justification is for raising interest rates just saying oh the economy is recovering and therefore we ought to raise interest rates isn't really good enough as far as say this is concerned you know i have some sympathy from their point of view but they're not the only people who've had to squeeze on their incomes people in jobs. as well everybody is in this boat together it doesn't seem right to me that we raise interest rates to improve the incomes of one group and risk hurting another group in consequence raising unemployment or whatever as a result of prematurely raising interest rates i don't myself see the fundamentals

in place to justify an interest rate rise at the moment and on the subject of branches. you know. there's basically a lot of i want to start again. on the subject of brands leaders why do you think savers are rent seeking a risk free returns when there are so many indicators that fixed income investors are reaching for year olds and junk bonds or emerging markets. i think there are two different sorts of savers there are people who really are reaching for yield they're moving into riskier assets which was the point of the low interest rates and quantitative easing was to encourage people to invest in the real economy to take more risk with their savings that was the point and to an extent it's working . we have that going on but we also have people who are sitting tights on insured bank accounts and government bonds which are risk free assets a moaning about returns on them they're the people that i would. it is rent seeking

because what they're basically saying is we want high returns on risk free assets when the economy is just not generating the productivity the income needed to pay those returns they're the people that i'm criticizing not the people who are reaching field i think the issues with people who are reaching for you know the slightly different that may be taking risks that they some of them shouldn't be taking now you know in conclusion on your blog you've written that you believe that coin is a bubble but what do you think of big quiet as a technology in and of itself. there are two sides to pick one is its. currency status its use as an alternative currency and the second is the payments platform the actual technology i think we should separate the two out as a technological payments platform it is very good it really is it kind of represents where we need to go in the future and these very promising. i don't regard it is used as a currency the thai question and that's very much also linked with the

proliferation of other currencies that we're getting a lot of movement into these kind of things and when we look at these it reminds me here should the dot com bubble where there were lots and lots and lots of dot coms and then eventually it crashed lots of them died but what grew out of it was the internet technology of the future the googles and the of the future and i think the same thing will happen with these cryptocurrency is that we will see a few survivors which will become our future at twenty currencies we do think that's where we're going as a society is towards electronic currencies francis very well said and i actually think i agree with you completely out of it cohen thank you so much for your time and your insight we hope to have you back on the show very thank you thank you that was francis koppel our finance and economic blogger in our london studio. time now for a very quick little break but stick around because when we return larry doyle joins

me to talk about his new book in bed with wall street you won't want to miss it and then in today's big deal i did harrison and i discussed the arrest of charlie shrem c.e.o. a bit instant sram was arrested on charges of scheming to sell the fare poncy to the operator of silk road another one you won't want to miss much as we head to a quick break here's a look at some of today's closing numbers stick around. big bucks but. i would like to do if you did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy shrek albus. role. in

fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and i was proud to mco we've been hijacked like handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our polity harbors once will just my job market and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world we go beyond identifying the problem to try rational debate and a real discussion critical issues facing. for ready to join the movement then welcome the. world. science technology innovation all the list of melamine still around russia we've got the future. ever heard.

on our show we've talked a lot about the washington for wall street connection and how government and banks work together and what at times seems to be a cooperative agreement to run the country well joining us to discuss this very issue is larry doyle former former mortgage backed security trader for bear stearns j.p. morgan and bank of america now he is also author of the new book in bed with wall street conspiracy crippling our global economy his book paints a disturbing picture of uncle sam and big banks conspiring for personal gain against the people they're supposed to serve now i began by asking him what led him to the conclusion that there was a conspiracy between the banks and the government. first thought thanks for having

me on what led me to that conclusion. was looking at the evidence looking at the facts over a number of years because coming out of two thousand and eight i was massively intrigued as to how that crisis happened and looking deep inside the regulatory system. you could just see overwhelming amount of objective view of the evidence that these regulators were protecting the industry so you know hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions of dollars going to washington lax regulatory oversight you would call it payoffs if not protection money coming back to wall street but the this story in my book. cites specific situations of failed regulation in which investors consumers and ultimately the american taxpayer are bearing the brunt of this pain ok now how has your made it easier for you to understand what actually is happening with the financial services industry here in

the u.s. . and great question my trading instincts in ability to to follow the money. fall of the flow of information through various financial reports documentation investor lawsuits also legal briefs and went to went down into the court house and followed some of these lawsuits so just instinctively rather than just taking things on the surface you know i dug deep inside a lot of situations and start looking instead of specifically at you know individual instances all of a sudden the forest started to really take shape and i think the case that i make in my book which is written in a narrative fashion you don't need to work on wall street to understand this it's an overwhelming case and people from inside the industry have not only called to

endorse my book but to praise me for writing it now i want to move to a kind of different angle here some analysts they point to the housing bubbles and financial turmoil in europe as strong evidence that unique regulatory issues here in the us like the community reinvestment act were not i repeat not primary causes of the housing bubble now here's the question doesn't the fact that europe has now any of the same regulatory capital issues as the united states suggests that the causes of dysfunction are not unique to the us alone. very much so i mean no doubt about that i mean the again what does it all boil down to leverage excessive leverage without sufficient capital and proper proper regulatory oversight those are those situations are not unique to the u.s. i mean there are certainly not only in europe but elsewhere in the world as well now why don't more people within the financial system become whistleblowers and

expose what's going on here again great question the fact of the matter is there were there were people on wall street who did speak up and in my book i cite about nine or ten specific individual cases and what happened to these people they were ignored even worse they were intimidated or even worse than that they were fired and they were not just junior level people they were also senior level people from within the firms but then also within the regular you know the main regulators of wall street who tried to blow the whistle but they suffered they suffered those those shameless those shameless sacks from the hands of you know the people running those those agencies. now can you give our viewers a specific example of situations or regulators that show where the corruption specifically lies. with pleasure. and again there the the number of

instances are almost too many to mention but i would cite the very merger of the the n.a.s.d. the national association of securities dealers with the regulatory arm of the new york stock exchange i tracked this case very closely. the case was ultimately appealed all the way to the u.s. supreme court regrettably the supreme court chose not to hear it but the overwhelming evidence in that case showed that the the proxy statement that was used for that merger was filled with lies there was a significant misappropriation of funds from you know the small and medium sized broker dealers for the benefit of the major banks on wall street and for the the executives running fenris i agree i understand this is an aggressive exposé but the fact is that was a public case that just didn't get enough enough attention and what was finger is defense fenriz defense in this case as in other cases is absolute immunity

absolute immunity which is the same privilege that the f.c.c. and other get government agencies receive i maintain though that absolute immunity without total transparency is nothing more than a license to steal that actually leaves well into my next question now you paint a picture of wall street is wall street relying heavily very heavily on self regulation can you explain this type of self-regulating feature to our viewers. i mean first off i think the overwhelming percentage of people in our nation and elsewhere do not appreciate that wall street is to a very large extent a self regulated industry and the conflicts of interest that go along with that i mean to think that goldman sachs j.p. morgan every other not only major bank but also medium sized and smaller broker dealer can fund a regulator so that that regulator that being federal will in turn aggressively regulate the industry is is

a stretch and in looking at the evidence you know the amount of fines that imposes on the industry i end up defining them as little more than meter maids now what specific solutions would you recommend fix too big to fail. well to fix the too big to fail model alternately these banks need to be broken up wall street right now is is nothing more than an oligopoly in which you have a handful of you know incredibly large organizations that control the financial system. the implications of that are too many to mention but they're not healthy for the economy for the very simple reason that the primary one is their ability to hoard information. and ultimately control prices if not markets and ultimately collusion we've seen you know massive evidence of that so how do you go about breaking up these banks you can't just do it unilaterally it

needs to be a couple step process an initially i believe that they should ring fence certain activities. within their investment banking business is the biggest challenge there will be getting their hands around their derivatives exposure but once they do this you know ultimately they we need to reinstitute glass steagall and bring a meaningful sense of integrity back into the regulatory system. and so that consumer deposits are not at risk the way that they are currently larry thank you so much for your time in here and say we have having you on the show and good luck with your book and excited to get through it aaron thanks thanks for having me on i appreciate it thank you you thank. that was larry joy author of in bed with wall street the conspiracy crippling our global economy and now it's time for today's big deal.

and harrison joins me now to talk about the recent of arrest of a major player major player now charlie shrem a big point millionaire and one of the most prominent players in the big one world was arrested on monday and charged with money laundering along with cooperating and excuse me operating an unlicensed money transmitting business whatever that means now is room with co-founder and c.e.o. of bit instant a big point exchange where big points can be bought and sold using dollars now the criminal charges against sram claim that he used his company to knowingly convert money into virtual currency for people interested in buying narcotics on the now defunct silk road website shawn is also accused of personally buying drugs on the site and according to the complaint this scheme was operated with with and in cooperation with another man robert he's fifty two who lives in florida known best as the t.c.

king was also arrested on monday in florida now i turn to you have lately it seems like we're hearing so much positive stuff about bitcoin and how it's becoming more mainstream do you think that these charges though are a huge blow to cryptocurrency is in general. i think basically what you see is a move out of the shadows in terms of certain illicit activities you know the government is cracking down on as things are becoming more mainstream we do see less and less focus on you know there was a big sting operation against silk road than this in particular is related to that and once those kinds of things you know those kinds of things are going to happen we're going to move into the. more mainstream activity what we've seen basically is the fact that people who thought that because it was anonymous and they can get away with illegal activity or not realizing that's not the case here here's the question though it seems that big can't shake it's unfair is connotation especially when it comes to it as a vehicle for curing illegal drugs perhaps there's

a good reason for that you know it is a vehicle for procuring drugs online no no i think the really what it is is it's a payment system a platform in general and you know as it becomes more mainstream we're going to see the benefits of the payment system i mean the way i like to look at it is that it is a. bearer instrument it's just like you know with when you have a dollar in your pocket you're the bearer of that dollar you can give that to someone the benefit of big coin is that you know no one can actually fraudulently take that money or it's digitally. imprinted that you were the owner and therefore it's a great vehicle you know to digitally that this person definitely own this particular product so it's a very robust platform and now this kind of interesting cameron and tyler wing cost the winkle vives wins were major backers charlie strums for a bit instant and after news broke of arrests they released

a statement saying quote when we invested in bit instant in the fall of two thousand and twelve its management made a commitment to us that they would abide by all of political laws including money laundering laws and we expected nothing less although it instead is not named in today's indictment of charlie sram we're obviously deeply concerned about his arrest we were passive investors in bit instant and will do everything we can to help law enforcement officials we fully support any and all government efforts to ensure that money laundering requirements are enforced and look forward to clear regulations being implemented on the purchase and sale of a point clear or regulations is a crafty way of saying saying that they have a good p.r. person on their side but if the. like the feds are really. big wigs and pioneers do you think the winklevoss is our next nobody is really interesting that they said the passive investor asked it wasn't it just you know what they're saying that you know basically we'd like to call it but by the way you know we are really active

investors in it but you know etc so they're really dup it. into this and see from this we don't know really read the perspectives that we. want to not mean the interesting bit actually is today that. it was. really very hard to take. that back with that or make their. legal. oh. oh oh please

please. please. please. for the people. the. general and i guess you'll only. see it even be a few hundred a day killing is going to leave it. to say i'm going to go for the missile. we've got people coming in lear jet criminals we've got people from it who knows where in the world this is a united states and very tough by the way you go to sure that i was worried that

they may not know life they live on mars you know mars. so we pick up things like. turbans prayer rugs so when we know they do they're coming from the middle east it's a concentration camp. concentration camp. study as if the white house is not even want to disclose the fact that he is a stranger. nationally

think he had to take the revolution into their own hands saying that fed up with the lack of determination among the opposition all celiacs had big deep roots of ethnic disputes and you. the u.s. president delivers new promises for a better future in his state of the union speech but polls suggest the public no longer trust him to follow through on his word. on to business but now as a foreign companies are ready to rush back into your brawn taking advantage of the cultural suspension of sanctions following last year's historic nuclear agreement.